Wow, I haven’t been writing much recently. I think it’s because I have been so tired lately. I don’t even know what I’ve been doing… But I feel tired all the time, and I am sleeping at nights. Maybe I’m getting sick.

I was looking forward to relaxing this weekend, because it’s the first weekend in a while when we haven’t had guests. However, I had a lot to do at home and I didn’t do them at all – I guess I relaxed a little too much! I don’t even feel refreshed which is the frustrating part.

We had Jera spayed this week. Poor puppy. She seems to be quite recovered, but we can’t let her be active until this weekend. And if you have every tried to keep a bouncy, hoppy puppy from being active… We’ve been keeping her on a leash and she has started to CHEW, CHEW, CHEW out of boredom. We finally picked up a few more chew toys at the store on Saturday. That has seemed to help – she LOVES the condensed rawhide we got for her!

Saturday was nice – I had delicious lunch at a nearby Peruvian restaurant with Susan and Hannah. That was nice, even if Susan refused to try the Inca Kola. It’s okay, though, because now I don’t have to play chess with her. :-) We also spent some time in Goodwill, where I picked up two books I’d been looking for, and an adorable watercolor. Unfortunately, I left my purchases in the Garrison’s car, so hopefully we see each other again soon so I can get them. :-)

Saturday evening Paul went to Petsmart to get a few things in addition to chew toys and cat food/litter. We had to get a new crate for Jera. In my initial desire to be frugal, I accidentally bought the crate without the divider ($10 cheaper). We soon realized that the little puppy would eliminate on one side of the crate and sleep on the other, which wasn’t going to work. So we went to Home Depot and spent $16 (oh the irony!) on supplies to construct a sturdy divider. (We had tried cardboard before, which she completely chewed through in one night.) Well, time came for us to engrandear (Spanish has a verb for “to make bigger” and I wish we had one in English too) the living space and it was very difficult. We decided that buying a new crate with a divider was worth it. So, let this be a lesson to you: if you’re buying a crate for a puppy, make sure it has a divider.

Anyways, new crate is set up and puppy is happy – she has a bit more room and we didn’t have bleeding hands trying to get chicken wire to cooperate.

By the way, I really like Home Depot. We also picked up paint for the living room. (!!!) I wandered around the store, wishing we had our own house so I could improve it to fit my (our) style and tastes!! I have many memories from growing up and visiting Home Depot very, very frequently. Especially when we were fixing up the home in Waxhaw so we could, you know, live in it. :-)

Back to Saturday. Neither of us felt like going home, so we drove around Perimeter mall area for a while. We ate dinner at La Madeleine because we had NO food at the house (call me lazy). We were going to go to REI next door to look at camping tents, but it was closed by the time we finished eating. Since most everything was closed by this point (9:30 – stores close too early!! we did consider driving up to Buford, but we decided not to… hmm, I thought I’d blogged about that spontaneous trip, but I can’t find it now; oh well) we decided to browse around in Borders. I picked up two books on graphic design to help me get a jump start on creativity. I’ve been trying to find some books like these, and I think they’ll really help. Paul and I have been talking a lot about our future, and how to best prepare for unexpected events. Paul has been successful at picking up some contract work, but I don’t think I currently have skills to create some great freelance designs (worth paying for). I really would like to spend this time pre-children working on my skills both creatively and professionally, because we are planning for me to go freelance once we have children. I just don’t want to be caught unexpectedly and scrambling to find clients. Ideally, I would love to do freelance eventually instead of an 8-5 job, since freelance is more flexible and often pays more. However, I don’t think I have the self-discipline for it yet and for now, I’d rather have a job. Goals to work towards, though.

Anyways, these are things Paul and I have been talking about and praying about, which is part of the reason why I moved my blog to the new domain name. ashleydesign.org will become my design website, where I will house my (updated) portfolio, and be a place that potential clients can find out more about me. I’m actually quite excited about all this. With Paul’s help, I installed Joomla! on Saturday night, and started to play around with it. I don’t really have anything yet but I’m excited about the possibilities. Stay tuned for more. :-)

Paul and I enjoyed staying up till 4am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. We weren’t really tired… I had Coke for dinner (bad Ashley!)… and ultimately, we are night owls who love the nighttime. I remembered all the many, many nights we’d stay up until 3 or 4 in Gerig lounge, and I am so glad we still are able to do it now, though very infrequently. We had many delightful conversations about missions (inward focus vs. outward focus), the emergent church (I’ve been doing some research about it, at Joanna’s prompting), politics (which, at our house, are very Libertarian), and blogging. I enjoy talking to Paul about these kinds of things.

Despite the wonderful evening, we had a bit of trouble getting up for church on Sunday! :-) But we made it and I’m glad we did, because we were able to talk to one of the deacons about redesigning our church’s website. We were encouraged by their openness, and we’re really excited to work on that. We spent the rest of Sunday being lazy and NOT doing any of the multiple things on our to do list. However, we DID go shopping – finally!! – and I made dinner on Sunday night, and have dinner planned for the rest of the week. Have I mentioned how much I really dislike cooking?

I also finished a post I have been working on for months. (I know! What a shock!) I am a bit nervous to post it, because it’s controversial in nature… I’m trying to gather the courage… It will probably go up sometime this week, since I am completely done with it and have read it through so many times I’ve practically memorized it. So, yeah, I guess stay tuned for that too.

Okay this post ended up being longer than I anticipated. :-) I guess I’m covered for the whole next week. ;-) Just kidding! By the way, this weekend Paul and I found out that the Academy Awards and the Oscars are the same thing! Who knew!